Western Culture Global Presents The Top 100 Heroes of Western Culture These individuals have most contributed to replacing ignorance with knowledge, savagery with civilization, disease with health, tyranny with liberty, poverty with abundance, and despair with happiness. #8: Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) was a father of the Scientific Revolution. He was the first astronomer to formulate a scientifically based heliocentric cosmology that displaced the Earth from the center of the universe. He also deserves credit for being one of the first to combine mathematics and science. Copernicus's greatest achievement, however, was his intellectual independence. In his time, the great tendency was to not think for oneself but to have faith in accepted authorities. Developing his theory required, however, that he question and significantly contradict authority. Specifically he had to reject the long-accepted Aristotelian / Ptolemaic Earth-centered view of the universe and the similar Christian view. This pro-reason, anti-faith act would soon help inspire countless other individuals to have similar intellectual independence, and this would open the floodgates to unprecedented scientific discovery and advancement in virtually every field. Go to #9: Thomas Jefferson Top 100 Western Culture Heroes — Home Top 100 Western Culture Heroes — by Numerical Order Top 100 Western Culture Heroes — by Century Top 100 Western Culture Heroes — by Category
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